Covenants grant two additional gameplay abilities, one being class-specific. It alters your playstyle. Covenants grant unique armor styles and special capes that look a little more like accessories. Titan-like Kyrian capes look more like angel wings, for example. Each Covenant has a unique campaign similar to those found in Battle for Azeroth and Legion.

The Shadowlands were originally intended to be a fully playable zone in World of Warcraft, designed for high-level play. The idea was that as deceased characters made their way back to their corpses, they'd see high-level players battling creeps in the area, which would inspire lower level players to increase their character level so they could experience the zone for themselves.[69]

The Realm of Shadows may be the same World of Shadows as the one that becomes visible when a [Elixir of Shadows] is consumed. It may also have something to do with shadow magic and shades. Death knights, necromancers, and undead as a whole share a strong connection with the Realm of Shadows from many hints that can be seen in-game. In the death knight starting zone, death knights are given the task to enter the Realm of Shadows in order to gain their Deathcharger. Later on, death knights are eventually able to learn the ability [Raise Ally] which pulls their ally's spirit back from the Realm of the Dead and forces it back into their body. Upon doing so, a buff is applied to the player stating that: "A touch of the spirit realm still lingers..." This shows that death knights and necromancers both have a connection to the Realm of the Shadows/Dead to perform necromancy which furthers the idea that they actually are drawing their magical power from it.

The popular autobattler mode (games like Teamfight Tactics, Dota Underlords, and Blizzard’s own Hearthstone Battlegrounds) lets players draft units and place them on a chess-like board. The units then battle the units of another player. Between battles, players can buy new units, upgrade existing units, or rearrange them on the board. And according to Shadowlands’ most recent datamine on MMO Champion, World of Warcraft is getting a similar mode.

Beings of death are ancient and powerful, and it is dangerous to meddle in their realm. When Odyn peered into the Shadowlands, he saw some of its inhabitants: souls in torment, the husks of the dead, ghostly wraiths with no face, and others with no form, all made of death itself. This was enough to frighten even him.[41] Several races in the Shadowlands, such as the kyrian of Bastion, are souls of deceased mortals who have been transformed to serve a new purpose. If one of these former mortals is killed in the Shadowlands, they die permanently. Other creatures—such as dredgers and stewards—are endemic to the Shadowlands and are naturally born from the magic of death to serve the different realms and help facilitate the process of the afterlife. If one such creature of death is killed, their energy is recycled back into the Shadowlands, and eventually another member of the same race will manifest to take the place of the one that was killed.[42][43]
Shadowy Tormentors inhabit this dimension, and emerge from it to torment death knights such as Koltira Deathweaver. The Lich King originally kept them at bay, but after the Knights of the Ebon Blade left his service, the tormentors are now loose upon them. He even appears in the World of the Dead, as he calls it, riding a frost wyrm during [73] The Power to Destroy.